Green Architecture: The ZeroHouse by Specht Harpman

The ZeroHouse, at first glance, may look like something straight out of the future. But upon closer inspection, the self-sufficient house is cozy, extremely well-designed, and ready for a live-in investor.

The ZeroHouse has been featured everywhere from Dwell to Treehugger to the Austin American-Statesman over the course of the last few years, but the project is finally, according to the architects, "shovel-ready."

At 650 square feet of indoor living space plus two covered porches, the house is smaller than the average Texas home. But if there's anything we've learned here at Re-Nest, it's that size isn't as important as the ability to work creatively with the space.

The house has a very small footprint, both literally and in a carbon sense. It's prefab, with solar arrays that harness, capture, and store energy. The closed-cell construction conserves energy, and the rainwater collection provides water while the 'digester' processes its trash.